The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz - #BecauseMiami: Sports Hustles

Episode Date: September 12, 2025

Friend of the show, Brittany Brave, who has a documentary in post-production about the Miami comedy scene called Muchacha, joins us once again. You can help Muchacha by donating to https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/muchacha/reft/20483451/muchacha today. David Samson comes on to discuss how his Miami Marlins ballpark negotiations led to a luxury box that was meant for public or charity use was used as a executive perk for high ranking city of Miami officials. And Norberto Menendez, who founded the original Life Wallet and left the company because John Ruiz went full "Miami bro", joins us along with his lawyer Scott Dimond, to talk about how he won his civil suit against Ruiz. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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and an annual travel credit. So the best hapice in town might be in a new town altogether. That's the powerful backing of Amex. Terms and conditions apply. Learn more at Amex.ca. this episode is brought to you by Defender with a towing capacity of 3,500 kilograms and a weighting depth of 900 millimeters, the Defender 110 pushes what's possible. Learn more at landrover.ca. Where was I? Pretty Brave is back for the second week in a row on because Miami wearing

exactly the same thing. That's rude. I obviously. I don't own multiple copies of this jumpsuit. Like me too. My closet is like Batman's closet. It's just like black shirts. I wear the same thing every day. I like looking like a small lesbian plumber. That's really...

It's kind of fine. It's a me, Mario. Okay, I'm sorry. I was trying to come up with the pun for that for this like super Mario lesbian. Listen, I'm going to be honest with you. Baby Gap was having a sale and your girl cleaned up. That's it. That's it.

That's why she's been here the entire week. No one noticed. She's just so, so petite. So small. Stugats has just been sitting on you this whole, this whole time. Consensually. We can say that now. Speaking of little people, we're joined now by David Sampson.

What an intro! The Miami Herald discovered last week that the Miami Mafia has hijacked a Marlins Park luxury box, known as an MVP suite, that is Suite 18, I believe, that was meant for public or charity use as their own private playground. So when the city of Miami and Miami-Dade County Commissioners negotiated what was then the worst Sports Welfare Deal in history in 2009, agreeing to spend probably over $2.2 billion in taxpayer money to finance Marlins Park. The team agreed to provide this Skybucks as a community benefit for local nonprofit and community organizations. Instead, the city of Miami mobsters have used it as an executive perk, according to the Miami Herald, lavishing themselves,

their friends, their cronies with free game tickets. including that franchise history making sweep against the Yankees. I mean, being a criminal is really stressful, so they're really going to need this suite to kind of decompress and keep out all of their antics, right? Listen, yes. Just trying to play devil's advocate. Even criminals need a place to relax.

Exactly. Even criminals need a vacation. To relax. But you've got Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, aka... You've got city manager, Art Manuel Noriega, the general. And you've got Ralph Rosado, the newly elected commissioner, who one of his first votes, by the way, was to cancel the election in November. He has already found the time to steal Yankees tickets from the city and charitable organizations.

Now, I'm trying to figure out who the hell would negotiate some kind of bullshit deal like this. Oh, hey, look, it's David Sampson, the former president of the Florida slash Miami Marlins who negotiated this deal. Was this sweet a bribe? David, were you trying to close the deal here? What was this community perk here? It actually is just page 32 of an operating agreement, and it's under community benefit obligations. So this was just part of the negotiation.

And you characterize it wrong. These are public documents that I just happen to have, believe it or not with me, in a bound book that you get when you do stadium deals or any sort of deals. So these are these signed, executed copies that are available in public. But I should point out that this,

suite it was asked for immediately during the negotiation by the city and the county negotiators and we were willing to give them the use of a suite and they wanted it to stay to say and it specifically says that the suite is for public and or charity use and public use means the commissioners and there's actually a specific way to determine whether the suite will be used by the commissioners or for charity because we agreed, because I was in a good mood that particular Wednesday, that when it was used for charity, we'd put food in the suite.

But when it was used by the commissioners, they would have to pay for food in the suite. And it's all right here in Section 7.3. You show it down, David. Gosh, did I ever. Because Miami. So what? Sports.

What a bird. They have to cater for themselves. But was this something you're, were like, okay, if this is what I need to get it done, quid pro, bro, take your suite. Was this something you were anxious to give up? It's very common. When we did our projections, assuming a sold out stadium didn't happen, assuming every suite would get sold didn't happen, we calculated that one suite would not be a revenue-generating

suite. And when the stadium was designed, we knew that was going to happen. Just like when we calculated how much we'd make with outfield wall signage, we knew that the city and county would get part of the outfield. wall. You actually hire a company to calculate what your revenue can be in a ballpark. It turned out not to be the case, but you calculate what it can be. And so we knew exactly what we were giving as part of this, but it was a very highly negotiated provision. This whole Section 7 took up so much of my time. We're not talking hours. We're talking weeks and months in order to get this done,

because these were the things that meant the most to the commissioners. Like, all right, what do we get? And you're seeing it manifested that they get to go to a Yankee game. I'm going to set aside for a moment. The fact that you said your projection said that you were going to sell all of the suites. What the hell kind of projection was that? So listen, there's three types of projections that you have to give to baseball. There's a downside case, a base case, and an upside case. The upside case, of course, is selling all your inventory.

The downside case is what I can sort of see from where we are. And the base case is what you expect to happen. So let's talk about this negotiation, you said, that took up so many weeks and months of your life on this deal. Clearly, the interest was more on the, quote, public use rather than the and or charity use. Is that right? Yeah, I love for your heads at because I didn't care. So you have to keep in mind that I just wanted to get the provision negotiated and how they allocated it during the course of the term of the lease, the 38 years. it really was of no relevance to me

because they have the right to choose as they want and we had it very specifically how they would do it and we talked about what they would do for home games for jewel events for opening day was a big thing opening day is split between the county and the city but the other 80 games it's 40 that the county controls and 40 that the city controls i remember the negotiation clear as day because the county didn't want to give the city anything

The city wanted the whole thing, and we ended up settling at 40-40 and them going together to opening day. Wow, I'm exhausted even hearing this. That's one little paragraph of a book that's, you know, like the size of, this is the book size. Right there. I don't know if you can see it. Do you bring this with you everywhere you go? If only for self-protection, if you're like walking down downtown Miami. You're walking papers.

Right. So I used that. Yeah. So I used to actually. carry around all of the agreements during the negotiation because you never knew when you'd get a call from somebody. Sure. So I always had it with me.

But now that it's finished, it's neatly on a shelf behind me on the set of nothing personal. So I'd have to think that this didn't surprise you, but when this report came out in the Miami Herald about Francis Suarez saying, how can I help myself? I guess this not only did not shock you, but this was consistent with the use that you recall negotiating back in 2009? Yeah, it was, to me, it was a big nothing burger. I love the fact that you attacked it. I love that it got news, but this is the stadium open in 2012 for crying out loud. And it's not like the agreements are undercover. They're literally available in public. All Pablo Tori has to do is like read them and anyone can find out anything. So no, when I read

the article, it was literally nothing. Right, but how was Pablo catching strays? I'm because my hemy right now. Oh, he's got to find out, you know. He finds out stuff. Oh, and this one's easy to find out because it's literally in public. No, you're right. I'm the one who f***s around, to be fair. And it's, uh, man, it's Pablo that that finds out. David, before we go, I have to ask you about this. This budget year brings extraordinary challenges. Miami-Dade County's mayor is looking for hundreds of millions of dollars in savings as her team crafts the budget for next fiscal year. Danielle Levine Kava unveiled her proposed budget today. The general fund, the cost of operating the county is $3.4 billion. There's an

approximate $400 million deficit. The county funds things like the sheriff's office, the county fire department, transportation, parks, and other core services. While dealing with the deficit, commissioners voted in favor of giving FIFA millions of dollars to bring World Cup matches to Hard Rock Stadium. Forty-six million dollars is the amount that everybody's been talking about that the Miami-Dade County is going to be subsidizing the corrupt billionaires at FIFA to have the World Cup here. Actually, this was after the fact. They already got the World Cup.

This wasn't like a quid pro quo, to be fair. But it's actually more than that because prior to this, years ago, Stephen Ross, the owner of the Miami Dolphins and the stadium, of course, that World Cup will be taking place down here in Miami. He negotiated to increase the incentive that he gets for bringing in a World Cup to $15 million. So when we keep saying $46 million, that's way low. The subsidy that the broke-ass taxpayers of Miami-Dade are responsible for is well over

$60 million for FIFA and World Cup. And we have a $402 million budget deficit this year, David. It's a little bit of apples to oranges because the money that's being used to pay Steve Ross, that comes out of a totally different bucket. And you can't cross the buckets. And you can take that up in Tallahassee if you want, but that's the law. So the budget shortfall can't be made up by some sort of change in what money is used, the tourist money that's used for events or for convention centers or for sports.

facilities or part of the deal for the heat the dolphins the marlins etc it really is all separate buckets and so in order to get the shortfall done what what this county does is they look at all the different ways that they can cut items in the budget knowing there's certain what's called fixed expenses and the deal with steve ross it's a fixed expense there is nothing they can do about it they can't change it they can't open it and in terms of voting for fifa what you don't want to do is have an event in your community that all of a sudden is not properly budgeted for or funded because then it can actually impact other parts of your budget if it goes full fire festival. So this is pretty common when there's sort of extra money that's attached

to big jewel events that you get. But they voted to increase the amount of money, the subsidy that Stephen Ross is getting. When you say they can't change it, they can't take it back. They can't increase it. They can change it in their favor. Right. I understand. They can make it higher. They can't make it lower. That's exactly right. that's exactly right how convenient is that well listen it's it's all it's all done by voting this is not like steve ross or or infantino called up and said hey you know do this or else it's all part of the negotiations that take place when you're awarded a world cup it's it's a complicated thing when you get a jewel event like that personally i'm annoyed because i'm not really a big soccer fan so on a personal

level you know what they say i want either less corruption or more of an opportunity to participate in it and i love how there's different buckets it's really just our bucket. They're all our buckets. It's just the taxpayer money buckets. Yeah, you can cross the streams, but you can't cross the buckets. I love this town. David Simpson.

David Simpson. Thank you. Thank you. This episode is supported by FX's The Lowdown, starring Ethan Hawk. Allow us to introduce you to Lee Raybon, a quirky journalist slash rare bookstore owner slash unofficial

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Visit tellus.com slash total security to learn more. Conditions apply. I've designed some very revolutionary technology. The latest one saves lives, which is basically a platform where individuals can store all of their medical records and if they wanted to add their DNA and when they have any medical emergency,

the EMS has all of your information. Right now, that doesn't exist. This revolutionizes medicine. We have a system called Life Wallet with biometrics. We can register patients before they go to the doctor. Those are the dulcid tones of former Miami Hurricanes, N.I.L. Sugar Daddy. John H. Ruiz, who we have been talking about on this program for some years, who went public with this shady SPAC, a special purpose acquisition company that almost immediately crashed. At one point, they had threatened to actually delist the company because it was trading like a penny stock. It has rebounded now to like $2 and change somewhere around there. But it's really just kind of this law firm that the SEC has been investigating for a number of years due to all kinds of shadiness, including some alleged financial improprieties, possibly some alleged fraud or misrepresentation of what the company is and what it can do.

Possibly and not even being a company at all. It is definitely a company. The question is what the hell does it do? And for a while, he actually changed the name of the company because, you know, any going concern. and the first thing they do is they rebrand. I think we have a term for that. It's called an alias. And so they called it LifeWallet.

And you heard in that clip that he claims that he designed. Well, the term he used is he described it as he designed this technology. And joining us now on the program is Norberto Menendez, the man who designed that technology, as I understand it. The founder of LifeWallet, a software engineer who just, just sued John Ruiz and won $12 million. Hell yeah. And we are also joined by his attorney, Scott Diamond, who won that case. Obviously, a pretty good attorney, if you just won $12 million.

Scott, what exactly happened here? What was the lawsuit about and what was this victory about? And when do we get paid? Well, if you can answer that second question, I'd appreciate it. I can tell you the case was basically a contract dispute. right, Mr. Menendez, was approached by John Ruiz to sell his technology, including the name in life wallet you were just referencing, in addition to some other information and other technology and software platforms. And so basically, Ruiz bought the stuff and never paid for it. And we ended up

suing for essentially that breach of contract. And the jury agreed that that was the deal and that they never paid us what they owed us and they gave us every penny we asked for. Norberto, you heard John Ruiz in that clip saying he designed this technology. Did John Ruiz design this technology? The technology of the biometrics is something that we had designed before and that we had built before. It's something that took us a bit of time to develop because it worked on iOS. It worked on Android. So that component is something that we had designed in the past. And he acquired it. He offered to buy it from you. What was the deal that you guys made that the jury found in fact that you guys made we had a or an oral agreement which was referred to as a gentleman's

agreement that included the purchase of our intellectual property we had a health care platform that we had developed over five or six years and he purchased those those assets so he purchased them without paying for them like did he tell you he i'm confused did he like put this on clarna so he could do it in payments. It's a shitty deal you made there, Norby. Well, that's a problem and a difficulty with an oral contract. But at the end of the day, the jury listened to both guys testify, and we explained what we said the deal was, and they agreed. And so the outcome was that he was supposed to pay us where he promised to pay us back in 2021. Can I just say I already trust hearing the word biometrics

from both of these men than I ever did from John Ruiz. We have biometric technology. I wasn't entirely sure if he knew what that day. It's how I feel when I go on dates and brickle and I ask guys what they do for a living. And they're like biometric technology. We have biometric technology. That saves lives. It's going to be amazing. It's forever.

Let's get a bottle. Let's celebrate. We only live once. And they call you bro. Yeah. Wolo? They say Wolo. Wolo.

Yeah, exactly. So $12 million. Was that what the deal was? That was what the oral agreement was for. That's why that amount? Correct. That's what we asked for. And the jury gave us every penny.

How did this go bad, Norby? I remember reading some details about a meeting that you had with John Ruiz where shit got dark. Yes, basically, essentially how the agreement went bad is that payment never came for the IP. But he's talking about the meeting. It's unusual as a lawyer to be able to use the word f*** in a pleading that you file. And it's even more unusual to be able to say it during your jury argument. But basically, that was the quote from John Ruiz. That's what everyone admitted that he said to Norb and sort of got.

in his face in a meeting, and that's why Norb eventually left the company. But what did he say? What did John Ruiz said to write? So right in Norbs' face. We were in a meeting and talking about figuring out some solutions to connecting to the data of other departments. And basically we got to a point where John was explaining how to do it. And I told them we know how to do it.

The problem is that we need additional people to do some things that needed to be done for certain technologies that we were working on. And then he looked at me aggressively and he said he walked towards me. I was sitting down in a meeting with 15, 20 people. And then he walked towards me and he says, you know, I could fuck you up real bad. And I looked at him and I said, you probably can. And then he said, you know, he repeated I could fuck you up real bad. And if you don't like it.

And then I said, okay, stop. I don't like it. And I'm leaving. And I left the meeting. The meeting was adjourned at that point. And that was my last day. This was like a professional environment with like you said 20 some odd people in the room? Well, you could call it professional.

But it was an executive meeting basically. Okay. Yeah. The only thing that John Ruiz looks like he could fuck up is. a box of croquettas. Can I just say... We have biometric technology. Also, by the way, if this guy came up to, like, he sounds like a Muppet.

Like, they're like being threatened by like, I could f-you-up. He was out of breath on the way over. All right, all right, the F-bombs. All right, let's not do that anymore. He had to walk all the way around the table. Yeah, he doesn't look like a picture of health. By the way, call me next time he says that to you. I got you.

Believe it, I'm scrappy. You're like, you're like a Shalala. a half high. You're like, it's called the Polion complex. I'd stay far away from it. She's scrappy. So you had this judgment, 12 million bucks. Again, it's on paper for the moment.

How do you turn that paper into a bank transfer here? Do you take life wallet coin? Has John Ruiz launched some sort of cryptocurrency now? What are next steps here, Scott? Well, we're still getting it reduced to a judgment. There's post-trial motions and this and that, but eventually it will be. And we'll have our judgment and then we'll start to collect on it. and we'll find out what there is there, there.

You know, there's a lot of creditors out there. We're not the only ones. So these assets may be encumbered, but we won't find out until we, you know, start showing up with sheriffs until. And then that's phase two. Yes, this is the grab them by the ankles, turn them upside down and shake the pockets out of it.

I really want to be a part of phase two. So if you guys need backup, let me know. You can see, she can stand on my shoulders and we'll be about the right height. We'll be about five feet tall. We'll be about five. Oh, come on. Five, six, we'll be like five, six, I think, if you on my shoulders, Sarah. Still be taller to you.

Or how guys say, five, seven in the right lighting and angle. Yeah, by the way, and I think the real takeaway from this is, like, hire the lawyer whose name is Diamond, right? I mean, holy shit, right? I mean. And get a girl, and get a girl in phase two whose last name is Brave. You want to get that money. You hire Diamond, right? Diamond and Brave.

That's any like, get me Scott Diamond. That's the kind of name. We should go into business together, and we should just claim bitches get money, Diamond and Brave. Let me see if that URL is taken already. I just want to say that... John Louise is a sleet remix. I think that's our whole tone. That is your ringtone, dude.

Norberto Menendez, Scott Diamond, congratulations, and good luck to you from here. Thanks, guys. Nice to you all. Thank you very much. Brittany Brave. Thanks so much for being here again. And y'all got to Google.

Brittany Brave Indiegogo or Indiegogo Mucchaca. Or Indiegogo Britney Brave. Or if you just scream into your computer I want to send a small woman money for her documentary, I believe. If you do it three times and click your heels. And Beatle just to show up. I believe you'll get a lot of different documentaries if you actually just say that, generally speaking. You'll get a whole bunch of content. Or go to Instagram

at Brittany Brave. And you'll also find everything you need there to support the cause here of broke-ass comedians in trying to make entire movies about the past, present, and future of their comedy scene. Cocaine's.